I Mean, I Do Get How You Feel, You Know?
As a hyper-full-stack technical-debt creator who has produced countless pieces of technical debt over the years, I have one thing to say.
Who came up with “technical debt”, anyway?
No, really. I get it. I know how you feel.
Because, believe it or not, I spent more than ten years working as an IT engineer who handled both applications and infrastructure. I do something slightly different now, though.
What you’ve seen, what you’ve felt, and what you’ve been made to do—I’m fairly confident I’ve seen the same things, felt the same things, and done the same things too.
So yes. I get it. I really do.
Still, Aren’t the Criteria a Bit Too Loose?
What I’m saying is—
aren’t the criteria for calling something “technical debt” a bit too loose?
I know. Sometimes you really do run into utterly crap code or documentation. I know that happens.
But does it really make sense to lump in things like “something that was considered best practice at the time but has since fallen out of favour”, or “an ad hoc solution squeezed out by people working under unavoidable constraints”?
That feels a bit different, doesn’t it?
From Where You’re Standing, Of Course It Is
Now, I understand that to those of you who came later, they all look equally like “debt”.
Of course they do, right? You’re the one who has to fix it. Whatever the reason behind it, you’re the one being inconvenienced by it.
Yes. I get it.
But there is one thing I want you to remember.
Everything you’ve done so far, everything you’re doing now, and everything you’re likely to do in the future—none of it comes with any guarantee that, when people look back on it later, it will be judged as “the right thing to have done” or “the right way to have done it”.
Even if you did the very best you could.
The people who came before you were doing exactly what you are doing now.
There is no difference.
That is the one thing I want you to remember.
Finally
As someone from the side that helped create the causes of the stress you’re dealing with today, allow me, presumptuous though it may be, to leave you with these words.
Seriously, sorry.
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